Your pet peeve, technical or otherwise.

[paulca]

Doctor practices in the UK.

Consider this yellow warning on "mine's"  "Patients Services" portal:

Please refrain from using special characters '&' and '<' when sending a message to your practice when requesting prescriptions as this prevents the practice from processing your request in a timely fashion.

The mind can only boggle as to what bug resulted in that.  Is someone badly converting the textbox to HTML and not escaping it maybe?  The whole portal looks like it was setup by a 17yo in his Mum's basement.

Reminds me of my banking app; there you are not allowed a € sign in the message you can add to a transfer. These messages handle always about money, but don't you dare to use a €, £ or $ sign.

I don't think COBOL supports Unicode   Or iso-8859-15

[paulca]

.... when I got through to that "Automated prescription service", here is the prompt paraphrased:

"Please speak clearly, the pharmacist you would like to collect from, if this is registered with us, forms are available in the surgery.  Your name, address and date of birth as well as details about the items you are requesting.  Please remember to allow up to 48 hours for the perciptions to .......".....  blah, blah, blah for another 30 seconds.

How do they expect older folks and actually ill folks to tackle that little bit of "current memory corruption".  It tries to throw a dozen different things at you in a big list and then goes "BEEP".

There is zero UX thought or design here.  Tell them what to say for the message, short, simple, clear.  Then shut up.  If you must "buffer" it with "additional information", then do that first.  Then finally ask, "Items required, name, dob, address, chemist is choice if required".

[PlainName]

Fake security measures "for your benefit".

Visited telonic.co.uk and got a page (see blow) saying it was far too dangerous (for me!) to allow my browser access. So I fixed the user-agent reported and got the real page without anyone dying or smoke escaping.

If it's dangerous for them then they should fix their website, otherwise just fuck right off in nannying me. Shame it's too dangerous to think about ordering anything from them.

[eutectique]

No I don't carry coins anymore and yes that makes it difficult.  Now I need to remember a bag and a pound coin.

I've got a plastic key tag with me for that purpose exactly, from a local Mr Minit.

[themadhippy]

Seems its the day for a good rant. Today AI is peeing me off,not for the usual reason,but for the massive hike in memory and storage prices,the 16gb i bought earlier in the year is almost double today,and the 32g i'm looking at for a new project is nearly as much as the motherboard and processor. And on a related vein,pc case manufacturers,all i  wants is a decent black quiet case,not interested in side windows or it looking like blackpool on acid,just a nice quiet case . The few ive found either dont have a usb c port or those that do put the ports and buttons top of the case were they'll fill up with dust and crap and also means they wont fit under a shelf without leaving a massive gap above , not the more sensible front were they've  lived for years.

[jonovid]

The looming Enshittification of Everything

when products & services decline quality as cost & complexity increase.
I am glad not to own a phone .  however Australia does follow the rest of the world in its consumer & business trends
complicated subscription model for everything.
see the last part of video 4:50 that is about household appliances including a complicated rechargeable front door handle.

[BlownUpCapacitor]

Looks like YT thumbnails are getting bigger and bigger as time passes.
Soon there will be only one video per page.

I would recommend using the browser extension YouTube redux. I personally find it works well for reverting much of the poor UI changes made by youtube.

For a few things, it can reduce the size of the thumbnails, change how the sidebar UI looks, change the appearance of icons and so on. It's fairly customizable in the configuration panel so you can do a lot with it to customize your youtube user interface. I recommend you explore what each function in the configuration panel does first before settling on something. I believe each function does have a short description too.

Hope this helps.

[paulca]

YT:  Every other player on the planet works with keyboard shortcuts.... why can YT never get this right and keep it working? Why does the player have 8 different focus zones and why does the keyboard shortcuts only work under 3 of them?  Why is it a different variation of broken every 3-6 months?

It's not hard.  Left/Right for forwards and back.  Up/Down do volume.  Space pauses.  Just that they need to work ALL the time.

[shapirus]

Now, here's an actually serious one.

Rocker switches mounted upside down. Not sure if there can be a worse offense in electronic/electric products than this.

[paulca]

Triggered!  That switch is the correct way up. 

[TimFox]

Unfortunately, outside of North America, that switch orientation is considered normal , and much of North America has adopted it to look modern.

[shapirus]

Unfortunately, outside of North America, that switch orientation is considered normal , and much of North America has adopted it to look modern.

But how can it even be normal? Up is more, down is less, hence flick the switch upwards to power things on, what would the train of thought be that'd result in the opposite? It's always been like this. Heck even the circuit breakers are this way. Never seen one that'd be reversed (not even one installed upside down).

[helius]

Unfortunately, outside of North America, that switch orientation is considered normal , and much of North America has adopted it to look modern.

Even in the United States, it used to be common for light switches to be oriented that way (flip up for off and down for on).
If you think of a very old-fashioned knife switch (paging Dr. Frankenstein), it would be closed by lowering the knob, and opened by raising it. So in ca. 1900 installations the light switches were oriented to match the expectations of people at that time.

[Analog Kid]

Unfortunately, outside of North America, that switch orientation is considered normal , and much of North America has adopted it to look modern.

Even in the United States, it used to be common for light switches to be oriented that way (flip up for off and down for on).
If you think of a very old-fashioned knife switch (paging Dr. Frankenstein), it would be closed by lowering the knob, and opened by raising it. So in ca. 1900 installations the light switches were oriented to match the expectations of people at that time.

Yes, but even earlier than that, light switches were commonly rotary, not toggle, which is where the expression "turn on/off the light" comes from.

Knife switches: reminds me of when I was a kid and my dad was teaching me about electricity. Played around with knife switches then. And who here remembers Fahenstock clips?

Good god, you can still buy those things.

[PlainName]

From a safety viewpoint, and particularly for the knife switch, down should be off. Even though modern switches don't act under gravity, something falling past them should turn them off. (There would be exceptions where the 'safe' state is on, but those would be exceptions).

[paulca]

Then we have 2 way, 3 way and intermediates/cross overs.

A lot of my light switches are just a single button these days.  I have 4 events.
* Click - a quick down and up
* Hold - Button down for longer than 250ms.
* Release - button released after a hold.
* Double click - two clicks in short succession.

That coupled with a state machine means I can do much more with the single switch, especially if I incorporate "interface feedback" using lamp pulses.

[shapirus]

A lot of my light switches are just a single button these days.  I have 4 events.
* Click - a quick down and up
* Hold - Button down for longer than 250ms.
* Release - button released after a hold.
* Double click - two clicks in short succession.

Do you actually find it convenient? I think I would hate it. I want my light switches plain and dumb: flick it upwards, lights on, downwards lights off, thanks, that's all, no thanks, I don't want to subscribe to your newsletter and connect my phone to it. I want proper real tactile feedback. I also want to be able to tell the state that the switch is in by looking at it to make sure it is off when, for example, there's a power outage and I need to leave.

[paulca]

A lot of my light switches are just a single button these days.  I have 4 events.
* Click - a quick down and up
* Hold - Button down for longer than 250ms.
* Release - button released after a hold.
* Double click - two clicks in short succession.

Do you actually find it convenient? I think I would hate it. I want my light switches plain and dumb: flick it upwards, lights on, downwards lights off, thanks, that's all, no thanks, I don't want to subscribe to your newsletter and connect my phone to it. I want proper real tactile feedback. I also want to be able to tell the state that the switch is in by looking at it to make sure it is off when, for example, there's a power outage and I need to leave.

Well, the buttons are added in addition to the switches.  I don't mind there being a stuck on button beside the actual switch.

The other driver of this was adding smart bulbs as a "wiring free" automation option.  Smart bulbs can only be communicated with if they have power.  So the physical switches stay "on".

Now, when I have guests and they inevitably flick the switch, even thought the light came on automatically...  it still works.  It will initially make them frown that it seemed to come on but then went off again when they switched it.  99% of people will immeidately switch it the other way.

The net result, asides the slight confusion in the instant is the same as if the "automation" wasn't there.  It is almost completely transparent to "OG use".  Except maybe if they stand still too long it will switch it back off again.

In the hall ways, bathroom and kitchen there are no buttons.  There is no need to have a button.  The lights decide when to be on and when to be off.  The concept of switching lights on or off has completely left my routine so much, when I walk into an non-automated room at night I pause for half a second and remember when the lights don't come on.

Other lights are harder to directly automate that way, like living rooms, bedrooms, offices etc.  So they have buttons.  Unimplemented yet, but the design I am hunting there is the time old state machine of "AUTO->OFF->AUTO->ON" on the "click".  It's very easy to track that state machine with a boolean output (light on or not).  When in "AUTO" mode they would respond like the hallway etc.  Come one with motion and "exterior ambient light threshold" and automatically dim and warm after midnight with a 5 second slow start to save my eyes in the middle of the night.  Yet a single press overrides into OFF or ON.  Long press would toggle current state placing it into manual ON or OFF.  Double click could do something else, like switch it's profile (the config that determines the various thresholds, delays, times of day, timeouts etc.)

There isn't really "an app".  The only thing I occasionally need a "UI" for at all is maybe changing the living room light colours for a change.  For that it's a generic open source web UI for zigbee2mqtt ... or I could use phillips hue or a dozen other off the shelf systems.

EDIT:  While light automation obviously saves you the effort in teh first place... the real gem I found was the "after midnight" mode.  If I get up in the middle of the night to go for a wizz, the automated hallway and bathroom lights will come on, detecting the motion.  However, they will take 5 seconds to come up from black to 25% brightness.  This is especially welcome in the pure shiny white tiled bathroom.  The full bathroom lights at 3am is honestly painful.  Not any more.  "What if I need FULL light?", well, I just switch the bulbs power off and on again.  That resets it to "power on state" which is 100% brightness.  You will get about 10 seconds of that before the auto profile will dim it, but I'd class that a "missing feature" or a "bug" I should fix.  After a power cycle the bulb should remain "manual" for a good 10 minutes maybe.

[themadhippy]

If I get up in the middle of the night to go for a wizz, the automated hallway and bathroom lights will come on

that the last thing id want,if i needs to get up in the middle of the night to tap the bladder,no lights go on,  i even try and keep me eyes shut or thats it im AWAKE

[woody]

Excuse the Dutch, but something like this might solve that for you.

[shapirus]

If I get up in the middle of the night to go for a wizz, the automated hallway and bathroom lights will come on

that the last thing id want,if i needs to get up in the middle of the night to tap the bladder,no lights go on,  i even try and keep me eyes shut or thats it im AWAKE

Well actually motion sensor activated lights are a blessing. I have these only in the bathroom, though. The trick to keep them convenient even in the middle in the night is to keep their brightness low. Slow/soft start will also be a welcome addition, but mine don't have it. Brigher lights are still necessary and available, but they require manual operation.

[paulca]

If I get up in the middle of the night to go for a wizz, the automated hallway and bathroom lights will come on

that the last thing id want,if i needs to get up in the middle of the night to tap the bladder,no lights go on,  i even try and keep me eyes shut or thats it im AWAKE

I used to fully enjoy my abilities regarding spacial awareness and navigation abilities.  I used to walk around the house completely in the dark.  Half the time I wouldn't even open my eyes.

Then I had an incident.  A small omission in the mental model, the edge of a kitchen worktop, while I reached for a bottle of flavoured water on the kitchen floor.  The sharp edge of the veneered worktop encountered the bridge of my nose at a good pace and peels the skin to the bone.  It left me with some reflections on that not being as much fun anymore.

[paulca]

One downside people complain about, including me, is batteries in the sensors.

They are not as bad as you might think.  Most "good" sensors will last a year, maybe 2 on a good 3250(?) coin cell.

The troubles I have are that "generic" coin cells are cheap, but will last until the first cold day of winter and crap out.  Good coin cells such as Panasonic are expensive enough that they sell them in 2 packs.  So when you have a dozen sensors, which tend to fail early winter due to temperature it can be annoying.  The process of changing the physical battery is dwarfed by a lot of brands of sensors use volatile memory to store their association keys and need re-paired after a battery swap.  Some even claim this is an "anti-tamper" security 'feature', ha!

My options are:  Get used to replacing batteries every few months OR, fork out for a full set of panasonics and replace them on routine every 2 years in September.

[shapirus]

One downside people complain about, including me, is batteries in the sensors.

No batteries, no problems.

This, however, may require planning before wiring is installed. But there are even light bulbs with integrated motion sensors.

[paulca]

One downside people complain about, including me, is batteries in the sensors.

No batteries, no problems.

This, however, may require planning before wiring is installed. But there are even light bulbs with integrated motion sensors.

Yea wired ones are too invasive and too many holes to drill, wires to run under old tongue/grove floors and (some) stone walls.

What I do need to do is replace the hallway sensors with better ones.  The ones I have lack a lot of the nicer features, such as "pet avoidance lenses" where the lens makes it far less sensitive towards the floor.

My automation ideas are more in the land of....

For the bedroom, how can I tell I'm in bed watching TV or in bed trying to get to sleep?  How can I tell I got up in the middle of the night versus simply tossed and turned a bit?  For these I am considering closer range presence sensors, possibly a "mat sensor" and maybe an NFC charge pad for teh phone I can detect.  Set the phone on its stand says, "Im going to sleep now".